Young Russian mezzo bids for breakout stardom in Met's new 'Carmen'

Aigul Akhmetshina likes to describe herself as “just an ordinary girl from a small village in the middle of nowhere in Russia.”

Not quite.

Akhmetshina started performing folk songs of her native Bashkortostan while still a toddler. Her family couldn’t afford a piano, so her first instrument was a button accordion. At 14, she left home to study singing in Ufa, the nearest large city more than 100 miles away, where she supported herself at odd jobs like handing out flyers while walking on stilts.

Now 27, this “ordinary girl” is taking